Talk:Dutch language/Archive 6

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Dutch Nation

Added a para for us, hope that is okay... (Niet veel links) :) Zarpboer (talk) 06:06, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately it's not really "okay". Following your edit, 2/5 paragraphs in the lead is about South Africa, and that would seem WP:UNDUE. I'm sure the information you added can be used in the article, but I don't think the lead is the right place for it.Jeppiz (talk) 09:06, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your POV, Jeppiz but your POV does not seem NPOV. The article is about Dutch Language? My contribution was about the Dutch Language? Yet there is a section dedicated to "Afrikaans" which is a recognised language of the world, by itself? is this not also POV? Can you please help me understand your POV better, so I can understand if it is NPOV or not? Zarpboer (talk) 10:28, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I think my point was pretty clear, did you read WP:UNDUE? I see no reason why 2/5 paragraphs in the lead should be about explicitly about Dutch in South Africa.Jeppiz (talk) 10:56, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

If your problem is with the 2/5 paragraphs why did you not simply remove the line breaks? And Jeppiz why did you not then relocate the contribution to the position, where in your POV, it is best suited? - As it stands now, you have simply removed it and although you have said: "I'm sure the information you added can be used in the article" you have not exactly acted in a decent way? - Can you maybe tell me why? Zarpboer (talk) 12:04, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I'll gladly tell you why. I found that the information is already extensively covered in the article, in this section Dutch language#Afrikaans. Furthermore, the term "Dutch nation" does not seem encyclopedic and be your own invention.Jeppiz (talk) 12:38, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

In effect, you were not truthful? It is that you do not agree with the content and not about the 2/5 para. Okay, thank you Jeppiz for explaining your POV. But: Factually the Dutch language of the South African Republic, was NOT Afrikaans, please see my reference for that fact. So, you are in fact wrong by referring me to Dutch language#Afrikaans - Can you please check your facts and then be big enough to admit that you were wrong? (Not about your POV, but about your FACTS) And, then in the same trend your edit seems to have been NPOV. Will you please undo your edit - and please, I do agree that the 2/5 para is too much, a single line will suffice? Zarpboer (talk) 14:27, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Just giving you my citation, again: Select_constitutional_documents_illustrating_South_African_history_1795-1910. pp. 481–482. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24129017M - Please note that historically, the South African Republic opposed the use of Cape Dutch / Afrikaans Language. - there are many more citations for that, please let me know if you think we need to write a paragraph, Then I can give you at least 12 citations from books published between 1880 and 1903. Thanking you kindly Jeppiz - just to fix an error - I meant your edit was NOT NEUTRAL, so Not NPOV, sorry about not adding the "not". - So this is what I wanted to add: If my sentence is not correct, can you please improve it? - The fact is that my edit IS about the Dutch Language, It IS about the history of the Dutch Language - and what I did add was: The African country of South African Republic spoke only Dutch and it was illegal to speak or write any other language under criminal penalty. - Any feedback? Zarpboer (talk) 15:09, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Jeppiz - how about placing the sentence under the section that deals with Africa and history of the Dutch Language? - That is the correct place for it, imho? - this is not personal, please - it also is not a point of view - it is a simple fact of history, which you are repressing - Please think about whether you are acting from a neutral point of view - as I have pointed out before - any feedback from you yet? Zarpboer (talk) 11:10, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Do you want to change the sentence? Or are you just completely opposed to adding the information? The sentence was: The African country of South African Republic spoke only Dutch and it was illegal to speak or write any other language under criminal penalty. - Please respond? Zarpboer (talk) 11:13, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Proposed Changes Removal and Additions - Discussion: Comments Requested

Please accept my intentions as good and neutral and for improving the page and not for the marketing/sales/promotion of any specific view or opinion.
The "Afrikaans" section of this page: I want to remove this completely: The earlier century-long isolation from the rest of the Dutch-speaking world made the Dutch as spoken in Southern Africa evolve into what is now Afrikaans."
Reasons: The Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) attracted many many thousands of Dutch citizens as teachers, administrators, legal, etc. as the only language allowed was original high Dutch, as written and spoken in Holland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Proposal: The addition of a new section, as it relates to the Dutch Language and the ZAR, simply the acceptable general historic view and expanding it later adding the well documented and researched struggles faced by thousands of high Dutch (not Cape Dutch) speakers to have the Dutch Language declared an official language of the British territory of the Union of South Africa. There areis academic research, respected published reference material and other resources to utilize. In fact some of the present citations may even contain some of the information already. If nobody comments in the next week or two can I assume that it is fine to proceed? Zarpboer (talk) 11:16, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

What is the text you propose and on which WP:RS sources do you base your request?Jeppiz (talk) 18:59, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

There are two issues, the first is the incorrect or inaccurate sentence, so may I remove that? - We can later replace it with citations to reflect the generally accepted academic view of language development, although it is outside the scope of this page?

The second issue is that which is directly related to this page: The struggle for the Dutch language in the ZAR, for which I may add, there does exist ample acceptable citations as citizens that became involved in the boer wars, did so among other reasons, because their religion, dutch language and culture came under threat. people fought wars and died for the right to speak, write and use the dutch language. This dutch language struggle against the Afrikaner and the British continued well into the new Union of South Africa. We can build this on the talk page for consensus, and do so over a period of some months, if this would be acceptable to other editors? - this would allow plenty time for everyone interested, to assess the citations for any acceptability disputes, to add, contribute and to resolve any POV/NPOV slanting. - Again, there is no agenda here, simply to reflect the events in Africa as they relate to the dutch language using extremely neutral citations, such as THEAL, EYBERS and acceptable general academic research, all as per WP:RS Zarpboer (talk) 08:29, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

I asked two questions, would you please answer them

• What is the text you propose?
• Which WP:RS sources do you base your request?

Zarpboer, I know you're new here. Repeatedly, several users have tried to tell you the same thing, but I'll try again. What you think does not matter. What I think doesn't either. So whatever your opinion about Dutch in South Africa may be, it has no relevance for the article. Only what you can source is of relevance. And that does not taking a source and then providing your own interpretation of the source. This is the most basic principle of Wikipedia and it applies to everybody.Jeppiz (talk) 11:12, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Jeppiz Thank you for pointing out that what we think does not matter. I am similarly aware of WP:SYN, but when discussing improvements on the talk page, it does assist with consensus and improvement of general quality, avoids general disputes, etc. You have previously reverted a simple single sentence edit of mine, simply stating POV, whereas I have added an acceptable source for that neutral and full acceptable edit. You have not reverted that edit, instead pushing your own POV that my edit, is a fringe POV and that your edit in "Afrikaans" already covers my edit - which it patently does not, it is simply your very own POV. Anyway, your actions has reduced me to discussing my edits, on the talk page, in order to avoid edit warring and frankly I am not convinced of your neutrality. Regarding to only answering your two questions, I will formulate the text on this talk page, together with references, as per my previous post. Zarpboer (talk) 11:30, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Map is hard for colour-blind people to understand

The map of the language situation in the Dunkirk district (File:FlemishinDunkirkdistrict.PNG) is difficult for colour-blind people to understand. There are helpful tips on how to make accessible graphics on the page for Category:Articles with images not understandable by color blind users --Frans Fowler (talk) 19:35, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Good point. Sadly I don't have software that allows me to edit the current graphs. Arnoutf (talk) 20:27, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Netherlands etymology

The origin of "Nether" hints to Roman origins here, while Netherlands (toponymy) seems to attribute it relative to Burgundy. Suggest harmonisation. 88.159.78.61 (talk) 16:47, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Mutual Intelligibility between Dutch and German

The current text states "the view of mutual intelligibility between Dutch and German varies" I however do not think the first source can be used to contradict Dutch and German are not mutual intelligible. While the first source merely uses observations and doesn't quote any research, the second one is original research and is preferable. Which one is better to use Gati123 (talk) 13:29, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Rewrite of this article

Hello, in the coming couple of weeks I will try to rewrite large sections of this article. As of now and before, it was quite messy. A lot of information has very little to do with the Dutch language and isn't that relevant here. Also, a lot of the grammar seems to focus on comparing it to German for some reason, even in the article lead. I've already rewritten the lead and the geographical distribution section and will work on this more in the coming days. Wouter Maes (talk) 13:45, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Please if you do, adjust the current statement that standard Dutch only has two grammatical genders. While it allows liberty to use the masculine gender for many (if one takes a conservative approach) feminine words, words with recognizable feminine endings (like -heid, -teit, etc.) are always feminine in the standard language, even though the implications of this are limited. The standard language also allows for conservative usage, hence historically feminine words can be considered feminine by users, and are deemed as such by many users esp. in the South, hence this is also indicative of a three-gender structure. Morgengave (talk) 19:20, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

The statement that Dutch has two grammatical genders and three natural genders covers this nearly perfectly. It is simply incorrect to say that Dutch has 3 grammatical genders. Wouter Maes (talk) 12:11, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

No, it does not. The standard language has three genders, though the consequences are limited, but present in referring, and pronouns like der, wier, diens, etc. Morgengave (talk) 14:58, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Dear Wouter, it's always a welcome thing for a fresh mind to take a critical look, and I do not doubt your good intentions. However, as for the lead, I do not believe your edits came down to a general improvement. Contrary to other literature, at Wikipedia the lead is not supposed to be an introduction. Most people only read the first section, and as they come from very different strands, the point is to convey the information in such a way that it is understandable, correct and complete, without entangling ourselves in too much detail, which belongs further down in the article. Improvements are always possible, but do be careful not state anything not covered by the reference that follows it. As for the comparison of the grammar to other languages, it compares it both to German and English, pointing to the respective differences and similarities, elaborating in a more professional fashion on the statement preceeding it, namely that Dutch is very closely related to both languages and sits somewhat in the middle. --Hooiwind (talk) 09:37, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

The statement that Dutch is 'in between' German or English is a useless one. To begin with, this article is about the Dutch language, not a comparison between Dutch, English and German. Secondly, the majority of readers of this article will have a non-existing grasp of German, meaning that it is an essentially worthless remark. Thirdly, linguistically speaking it is not at all useful nor true as languages aren't comprised to percentages of neighboring languages. It's linguistics, not legos. Wouter Maes (talk) 09:51, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

The lead I've rewritten is void of such useless statements and gives the general characteristics, distribution of the Dutch language. Wouter Maes (talk) 09:52, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Wouter, relax, no need for strong vocabulary. I've reverted back to the original lead (as it's been for years, not the lead written by you in a jiffy a couple of days ago). The existence of 600 varieties does not belong in the lead, Botswana and Zimbabwe only have very little pockets of Afrikaans-speakers and their mention in the lead on the Dutch language is therefore quite random, "extent" is spelt with an "e", the comment on natural gender and grammatical gender does not belong in the lead either, nor that some southern dialects are more conservative, a word-count is not of much interest, as every language claims to have to largest vocabulary and some languages may be more analytical while others use compound words, and Surinam is usually spelt with an -e at the end in modern literature. As for the comparison between Dutch, English and German, it simply shows the features of the Dutch language and puts them into context; the statement of Dutch being "midway" between English and German is backed up by multiple references and corresponds to the general conception by most people (and the lead is written to that public, while more specific information should be offered further down). The mentioning of the Scandinavian languages as related languages is correct, but makes it a bit crowdy. I've tried to incorporate or retain most of your edits, at times moving them further down the article, so you can't accuse me of not being open to improvements. I would suggest you concentrate your attention at those sections on grammar, vocabulary and dialects that you seem to know quite a bit about. Translating the names of dialects to Dutch (... "Limburgish" (Limburgs)...) is superfluous however, just as the use of bullet points is to be avoided. Please take these comments to heart. --Hooiwind (talk) 11:44, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

I do agree though that it would be a good idea to avoid the "in between" phrase; the fact is however that Dutch shares many features with German that German does not share with English, and many with English that English doesn't share with German. Hence the talk of a "midway position". How to wrap this up in three words? --Hooiwind (talk) 11:59, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

A minor spelling mistake in a 4000 word rewrite is not a reason to revert to a previous version which is demonstrably more incorrect, vague and random. The lead as I've written is it, and the information it contains, is based (in terms of structure) on the articles on English, French, Italian and German. If 'your' version of this articles lead has been here for years (which, I've checked, isn't the case) that would be nothing to be proud of as it's a mess in both its content as well as the way it references what it claims.

No other language-article I've checked here on Wikipedia compares the subject language to other language to such an extent as this article does. Nor do the languages to which Dutch is compared (English, German) reciprocate these comparison. i.e. in the article on German, there is virtually no reference to Dutch, further strengthening my position that this kind of content is uncommon.

If you want to improve the text, then go again, but do not revert my edits to that mess of a previous version. Or, if you do, explain on talk why you think that version is better prior to reverting. Thank you. Wouter Maes (talk) 12:45, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Just for the record, you're the one bluntly reverting, deleting, starting an edit war and not actually replying to comments, instead using an utterly childish and rude way of communicating. Let me remind you this is a collaborative project... --Hooiwind (talk) 12:59, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Maybe insert edit by edit, rather than changing the whole lot at once, that makes it much easier to integrate both versions into one. A major point of objection for me is that you write that Dutch is "the" official language of Belgium, whereas that country has 3. You only mention the Netherlands in 3rd position, whereas it's the most got the largest Dutch-speaking population. You also deleted any mention of the relative weight of the Dutch-speaking population in any of the mentioned countries... I simply don't understand your insistence on the subject. --Hooiwind (talk) 13:03, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

My revision was a major overhauling of part of this article. If your "major point of objection" is that I write that Dutch is "the" official language of Belgium, whereas that country has 3, the simply change "the" to "an" and be done with it. Same with the position of the Netherlands within the list of countries were it's spoken. If you prefer size over alphabet, then please, change those things. But do not revert my hard work because of two minor things. Surely you must understand this? Wouter Maes (talk) 15:11, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Wouter, surely you must also understand that if you get reverted, you should come to an agreement before putting it back? What you're doing now is edit warring. CodeCat (talk) 15:45, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Wouter, you're the one doing the big changes here, so it's up to you to motivate why you find it necessary to not merely edit, but "overhaul" the lead which has existed in more or less its current form since 2010 and also resulted from "hard work" by others. I'm still presuming good faith, but to me your edits come down to this: relevant information is deleted, and replaced by less relevant stuff, thus the whole thing is not getting any shorter or more readable; and also, by the way things are being put forward, the reader is left with inaccurate assumptions. Examples of this include the replacement of the weight of Dutch-speakers in the general population (that is why it currently reads "most of the population of the Netherlands and sixty percent of that of Belgium") by a mere list of countries or territories in random order (Belgium, Suriname, Netherlands; neither alphabetical nor logical), while leaving out the nuance on the Dutch Carribean (where it is an official, but not a common native language—also, the islands are more commonly known under their individual names), adding an overly obvious statement that Dutch is an "immigrant language" in the States, while deleting an estimation of the number of speakers, removing the nuance on Indonesia ("to a lesser extent"), while adding Zimbabwe and Botswana (which are pretty irrelevant), and so on. Futhermore, the statement that Dutch is one of the closest relatives to English and German alike (avoiding having to mention minor languages such as Low German, Scots or Frisian) is replaced by a list of Germanic languages, and ends with the comment that Dutch is (after Frisian) the closest relative of English (leaving the reader to presume it weren't the closest relative of German, which it is). An after all brief list of grammatical features—indeed summing a few up, then saying these are shared with English, then a few others, and saying these are shared with German (now where's the harm in that?)—is being replaced by a quite randomly chosen and frankly too technical claim on grammatical gender (of all things in grammar...), a claim on the existence of 600 dialects and the conservatism of the southern ones (which may be true, but does not "identify" the Dutch language as a whole, and therefore belongs further down the article), and a word count, which is of little added value. What I do think could be of added value, when fitted in properly, is a brief mention of the Dutch Language Union as its regulatory body, its use of compound words in vocabulary, and frequent use of the diminutive, and maybe also a reformulation of "between them"—which from what I understand bothers you a lot—to a better reading phrase, always, of course, backing it up with good quality references. --Hooiwind (talk) 19:54, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Restructuring headings and reducing overlap

I would like to suggest to restructure the article by moving and combining headings in a more logical order. Not only for a better understanding of the article, but mainly to reduce the overlap; A lot is mentioned twice or three times under different sections.

Combining and moving headings:

• Combining "1. Name" with "10. Popular misconceptions" (10.1, 10.3, 10.5 and 10.6)
• Combining "2. Classification" (the classification part) with "10. Popular misconceptions" (10.2 and 10.4)
• Moving "2. Classification" (the dialect part) to "5. Dialects"
• Combining "3. Geographic distribution" and "9. Dutch as a foreign language"
• There is also overlap between (the rather technical examples) mentioned in "2. Classification" with "6. Phonology", "7. Grammar" and "8. Vocabulary". I would suggest to mention only some notable examples under "Classification", move some to "Grammar", "Phonology" and "Vocabulary", and maybe omit a few aswel, since they reduce the readability of the article.

Reordering headings:

• Starting of with "Name" and "History"...
• ...out of which the "Classification" follows..
• ...and the difficulty some of the "Dialects" pose,
• leading to the "Geographical Distribution" from Dutch across the language borders in Europe, to the world at large.
• Finishing of with the phonology, grammar and vocabulary.

--Watisfictie (talk) 05:27, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Names of languages and dialects

Since I am going to revered the names of the headings, I have moved the discussion between User talk:Watisfictie and User talk:Ogress here:

Mainly for reasons of unity in the headings, I used in the History section Old Frankish as subheading, in line with the subheadings in that section Old Dutch, Middle Dutch etc. Do you have a reason to change this in The Frankish language (including even the article the)? Old Frankish is a very common name for the language. If you do have good reasons, in that case I would suggest to use in all subheadings the article the and the word language after the language in question. But it doesn't have my preference, since it feels redundant: it is pretty obvious that we are dealing with languages/dialects here (and not with the Frankish culture for example). Also, using articles in headings is not very common (for the same reasons of economy).

The same question with regard to the Middle Dutch dialects (article 'the' not used consequently, adding dialect/language after the dialect in question). Watisfictie (talk) 15:27, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

@Watisfictie: The languages are so named on Wikipedia. It's not "Old Frankish", it's Frankish language (because there was no Middle or New/Modern Frankish). I added "the" in that header because tbh it seemed really weird without it, but that's a style point I'm totally willing to adjust if you disagree. Same with the other edits, where they are called "X dialect". The exception is, of course, Limburgish, which is Limburgish language as it is referred to as a language. I also changed a term to "varieties" at one point, I believe, because it was neutral to the question of whether the following were dialects or languages. Ogress 23:43, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Old Frankish is an entry in Wikipedia, and it leads to the same page as Frankish language. Sometimes entries are known by more than one name (the United States for example, or trees and their fruit). This is the case also for Frankish (as the Wikipedia entry of Frankish points out in the first sentence of the lead where all the alternative names for the language are mentioned). This is the reason Wikipedia has a system of redirects. Nevertheless I have no problem dropping the "Old" in Old Frankish, even though it is the same language as Frankish.

But I am not in favour of using the formula "X + language" or "X + dialect" in headings or enumerations. Because they should be quickly readable, and in the case of enumerations it's too much repetition of the same word. The context of the subheadings under history, and the enumeration of Middle Dutch dialects is clear enough to understand the meaning. (And in the 5/6th century the different languages (Saxon, Frisian etc) where still mutually intelligible, so language and dialects in that respect didn't differ anyway. We refer now to them as languages, because they have lead to different languages in later periods).

Modern day Limburgish is a language or a dialect depending of one's perspective. The Dutch government recognises it as a minority language. In Belgium however, where the same Limburgish is spoken, it is not recognised as a language and regarded as a dialect of Dutch. That is not to say that the modern day Limburgish dialect/language is one of the most distant dialects/languages from the standard Dutch language. Apart from this, when linguists talk about Middle Dutch, they mean the Hollandic, Brabantic, Flemish and Limburgish dialects. (See also how it is used in the entry Middle Dutch. Watisfictie (talk) 05:44, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

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Dutch Low Saxon

The Dutch Low Saxon had a tagged sentence, "In other words, this group is Dutch synchronically but not diachronically." I have removed this as it neither makes sense nor is, I suspect, the original intent of the writer, and additionally (and crucially) has no cite support.

It is my suspicion that the reason DLS is considered Dutch is because of either 1. convergence and assimilation under Written Dutch influence or 2. confusion due to its closeness to Dutch due to convergence and assimilation. Either way, linguistically, the sentence is currently nonsensical. Ogress 19:16, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

The map

I have some objections to the map depicting the entire North Rhineland as the home of Dutch dialects. I suppose that in the vicinity of the Niers river some are spoken, but, though some of these Frankish dialects may not be Upper-Franconian, they can't be regarded as Dutch. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 15:02, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

7 de middag

Does "7 de middag" mean 7 AM or 7 PM. I think it's 7 PM. 112.215.64.134 (talk) 02:10, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

I have never seen this combination. It would be something like "3 uur 's middags" (literally 3 o clock in the afternoon, which is 3 PM). If you would encounter 7 it would probably 7 's avonds (7 in the evening) or 7 's ochtend (7 in the morning). Arnoutf (talk) 12:32, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

I've never seen that one either, but it could also be "7de middag" or "7^de middag", meaning "seventh afternoon" (or "seventh noon" in the south). PiusImpavidus (talk) 12:48, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Ok, how about "7 uur's middags"? 7 AM or 7 PM? 111.94.161.176 (talk) 04:34, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

"7 de middag" resembles the common expression 7 uur in de middag. But 7 o clock is not in the afternoon, the middag ends at 6, I would say.--Watisfictie (talk) 08:16, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

7 uur's middags would be very rarely used (as indeed the afternoon ends at 6, so it would be 7 in the evening). But if 7 s middags would be used it would be definitely afternoon and thus PM. But let's not continue this much further as this is a highly speculative, possibly fully fictitious case that does not feature in the article; and it is not clear where this threat is going to for article improvement. Arnoutf (talk) 10:35, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

My take is very simple: "7 de middag" refers to the seventh hour after noon ("middag") ie 7pm. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.77.61.28 (talk) 19:34, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

But middag transliterates to Mid Day (ie Noon) not AFTER noon. So that does not fly. And let's be fair, neither would in English the term 11.59 afternoon work (for 23.59). But again, the issue remains, is the phrase ever used. Otherwise this is all moot. Arnoutf (talk) 19:57, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

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Germanic umlaut does occur in the Netherlandish ("Dutch") language

In spite of what is told here, the Germanic umlaut does also somehow occur in the Netherlandish language and most certainly in Netherlandish dialects. (I do not like the word Dutch, since it is associated with the incorrect geographical name Holland for the Netherlands.) The most obvious example of Germanic umlaut is the plural of 'stad' (town, city), which is 'steden'. In Netherlandish dialects, especially along the German border, the Germanic umlaut used to be even more common, actually like in German: plurals, diminutives as well as the third person singular of strong verbs tend to have an umlauted vowel. Under the influence of the official Netherlandish language the Germanic umlaut is rapidly disappearing. Nevertheless, the plurals of some nouns with the short vowels contain a long vowels instead: bad/baden (bath/baths), pad/paden (path/paths), gat/gaten (hole/holes), hol/holen (hole/holes), schip/schepen (ship/ships). This vowel change phenomenon is actually related to the Germanic umlaut: the long vowels have a slightly umlauted sound compared to the short vowels, so the Germanic umlaut remains dormant in the Netherlandish language. Amand Keultjes (talk) 18:18, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

The vowel lengthening has absolutely nothing to do with umlaut. It's caused by open syllable lengthening, which applied in the plural but not in the singular, which caused the alternation. It originally applied to many more words, but those were regularised later.

In any case, umlaut definitely occurs in Dutch, as it does in all surviving Germanic languages. However, it only applied to historically short vowels, not vowels which were long/diphthongs in Old Dutch. Thus, there is the unumlauted voelen compared to English feel, German fühlen which have umlaut. steden is a rare example of umlaut in grammatical function remaining in Dutch, in all other cases the umlaut has been undone in the plural if the singular has it. Such levelling has also occurred in other cases, such as gouden which replaced the older gulden to make it agree with goud. CodeCat (talk) 19:15, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

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Change of a misleading example

In the subsection on Consonants, the last sentence of the first paragraph had a misleading German example. The t of Brot is the result of the High German sound shift and has nothing to do with final-obstruent devoicing, as proved by the plural Brote. Brot has underlying final t. I have replaced the example by one that does not have this problem, but not being familiar with the conventions involving braces, I haven’t used them. Feel free to change the notation if this is desirable. Polla ta deina (talk) 14:53, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

letter frequency

A comparison of letter frequency between Dutch, English and German

This picture is incomplete and misleading:

• Which English is considered? Real English (with -re and -ise), US English (with -er and -ize), another type, all types? Obviously US English has z more often than real English.
• German has more letters, namely ä, ö, ü, ß. Due to technical limitations ä can be replaced by ae etc. But is ä simply misleadingly omitted, is it missleadingly treated as ae, is it incorrectly treated as a?
• What time is considered? Before ca. 1900 German often used th instead of t. So obviously h was more common before 1900 than after 1900.
• What's the source? Picture description page only has "Source: Own work", does that mean it's original research?

-84.161.33.192 (talk) 06:50, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Agree without source this picture is not acceptable. Especially in the context of which English (if it were British English the U frequency seems somewhat low - colour etc), if it is American English the z frequency is impossibly low. Also how do we count diphones (e.g. Dutch has a lot of "double" vowels (ee, ie, ou) where German uses umlauts - and what happens with those? For now I do not think the figure should be in until it is clear what data is used to create it. Arnoutf (talk) 11:09, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Van Dale, headwords

There is a contradiction between this page giving more than 200 000 headwords to the Van Dale and the Van Dale page giving 90 000. --Dominique Meeùs (talk) 04:55, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Germanic dialects map

Archeological cultures

This map needs to be removed because it peddles the same myths about the Germanic peoples that were circulated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For one, how can you draw such clear borders between supposed ancient "Germanic" dialects if no written record of them exists?! Also, archeological evidence show a different picture all together, with many inhabited areas referred to as "cultures' because they can't be linked with certainty to any specific group of peoples. --E-960 (talk) 10:48, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Help needed with an ancient dutch book

It's some months now I've been working on the XVII century "Euclides Danicus" book, by Gerog Mohr. For some reasons, I build a new PDF file, 40 text pages + 8 drawing pages. The problem is to do the OCR, since ancient Dutch uses some "strange" characters I don't know which unicode to replace with. Here are some examples:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aldoaldoz/38799385520/

• The yellow background are related to a char similar to an F (beFtaende, eerFte) which in modern dutch should py replaced by an S;
• pink background: "ct";
• green background: the "long S", which is no more used in modern dutch.

I'd like to do the OCR the best way possible, so that the ancient language is preserved at best (actually I don't want to translate it into modern Dutch). So the questions are: which unicode chars should I use? Is there someone can help me, or can tell me someone to ask? Once ready, the file will be uploaded to wiki commons, both pdf and djvu. Thanks in advance! --Aldoaldoz (talk) 10:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

U+0283, this is suposed to work for the long s. You could also try Unicode 383. I hope it works! Falco iron (talk) 11:55, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Diminutives

A (more) helpful account is given on http://wrvzoektochten.be/onewebmedia/Verkleinwoordjes.htm, as well as on https://onzetaal.nl/taaladvies/verkleinvormen-algemene-regels/ (with at least one internal contradiction on 2018:0709, for "leerlingetje", and several confusing or debatable wordings).Redav (talk) 00:02, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Dialect boundaries vs political border

In the article I read: "However, the national border has given way to dialect boundaries coinciding with a political border, because the traditional dialects are strongly influenced by the national standard varieties." "To give way" means: "to yield / collapse / be followed". I suppose the author did not mean the national border yielded to dialect boudndaries.

I suppose the author meant to express that (some) former dialect boundaries have given way to (a) new dialect boundary/ies which run(s) along the national boundary; this would make sense. Can the author confirm this?Redav (talk) 22:24, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

I guess they meant, "has given rise".  --Lambiam 19:19, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Dialects

How this section is structured is confusing. What is the different between a "dialect group" and a "regional language?" And why is Limburgish listed in both sub-sections? More than that, the map in the Dialects section show Dutch Low Saxon and Limburgish listed as dialects. I realize that there is some debate over this, but from the perspective of the article on the Dutch language, to make this less confusing, what I would do is to simply list them all as "dialects" and then make note of on the items for which those particular dialects are also granted regional language status. To have two subsections and include one in both is confusing from an outsiders perspective in particular. --Criticalthinker (talk) 02:23, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Every regional language consists of a group of dialects. Some groups of dialects have been afforded the status of "regional language"; others have not been so lucky. How linguists group dialects together should, hopefully, be based on linguistic criteria and not be influenced by political expediency. But acquiring the status of "regional language" is a political process, and does not always result in the groupings that make the most linguistic sense. There is an unavoidable amount of arbitrariness and subjectivity in defining dialect boundaries and groupings, just as when partitioning the colour spectrum into main colours (red, orange, yellow, ...) or defining the concept of "earth tone".  --Lambiam 19:46, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm less interested in the why (which I understand) than the particular structure of the items in the article. I don't think we need seperate "dialect group" and "regional language" subsections in the "dialect" section. I'm proposing getting rid of the "regional language" subsection and simply making a note on the "dialect group" which of those has been designated regional languages. --Criticalthinker (talk) 00:22, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

I should clarify that what I'm taking issue with is Limburgerish being listed in both the dialect group and regional language subsections, which comes across as confusing. Despite what I said above, I'm not sure if there is an easy way to remedy this. From my personal view, it readily appears that Dutch Low Saxon is, while it has had major influence from Dutch, is in fact another language. But that isn't my call to make, here. --Criticalthinker (talk) 01:42, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps it has become less confusing after my recent edit.  --Lambiam 00:21, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, this is a bit better. So, Limburgish is clearly a Dutch dialect given regional language status in the Netherlands. And linguistically, Dutch Low Saxon is a whole other language (though influenced by Dutch on the Dutch side of the border) also recognized as a regional language in the Netherlands. --Criticalthinker (talk) 02:51, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

The classification on the second last page of the following page is quite comprehensive: https://www.academia.edu/3130916/De_analyse_van_taalvariatie_in_het_Nederlandse_dialectgebied_methoden_en_resultaten_op_basis_van_lexicon_en_uitspraak. However, it poses several questions. It does not include the German parts of Limburgish and South Guelderish. It has South Guelderish and Brabantian as Centraal zuidelijke dialecten.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384115000315 figures 8 and 9 as well as https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-dendrogram-derived-from-the-distance-matrix-based-on-unweighted-Manhattan-distance_fig2_2546927 also exist. https://benjamins.com/catalog/avt.22.17spr/fulltext/avt.22.17spr.pdf, figure 5, is a map about syntax.Sarcelles (talk) 20:14, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

The other issues concerning my first classification include, that it does not follow the Uerdingen and Benrath Lines, as well that it divides Limburgish. Sarcelles (talk) 12:13, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

There is also the question, whether tonality should be used as definition of Limburgish.Sarcelles (talk) 20:29, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

It uses the umbrella term Friesland, which can't be used for this article. Other statistically founded sources have to be taken into account for the purpose of classification, too.Sarcelles (talk) 12:16, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Standard language: 3 genders

I am confused by the "two to three genders" in the lead. So there are neuter words which I don't think anyone is disputing. And while many historically feminine and masculine words can be considered "common" in the standard language (=speakers can chose whether these words are referred to as "hij/hem/zijn" (he/him/his) or "zij/ze/haar" (she/her/her)), not all words can. Het Groene Boekje has purely feminine (e.g., ) and purely masculine () words, which means that there are three genders in the standard language. Morgengave (talk) 09:24, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

IIUC, Het Groene Boekje gives genders as they were historically, and still are in Dutch idiolects and regiolects using all three. However, it has long been "acceptable" (since the 1960s and possibly earlier) to regard as masculine all de-words except those naming biologicaly female beings. As a rule of thumb, Hollandic usually has two genders (de and het, with, as in English which has no grammatical gender, zij, ze, haar only used for female persons or animals) while Southern Dutch (Flemish, Brabantian, etc.) usually has three (hij, ze, het, with de zon (the sun), de gelegenheid (the opportunity), de broederschap (the fraternity), etc. beiing regarded as feminine). I'm not sure where to draw the line between them. — Tonymec (talk) 00:57, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

References

@Vlaemink:, your recent edits included a few references that you invoked but didn't declare, which is leading to loud red errors in the article's reference section. Could you check and add the source information as appropriate? Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 19:00, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Dutch for Hindi speakers

The English Wikipedia article states that "English is the only language to use the adjective Dutch for the language of the Netherlands" but the English to Hindi translation of "Dutch" provided by English Wiktionary contradicts this. The Hindi word for Dutch ("डच" / ḍac) derives from the English word "Dutch". The translations into Dhivehi, Marathi, Nepali, and Urdu also appear to share the same root from English. Nicole Sharp (talk) 15:17, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, the Hindi word for Dutch is unambiguously an English derivative, this is why it is ignored. The article wants to say that "English is the only language to use Dutch as an own word for the language of the Netherlands", the cognates of the word Dutch, German deutsch, Swedish tysk, Dutch Duits, Italian tedesco, all mean German, while Hindi probably had no word for either Dutch or German, as the Hindi did not know these nations, therefore, when it became important, they started to use the word for them from the language they know had, English. This all means that डच is actually an English word in Hindi i.e., "English is the only…" can be considered right. CERBERUS - ii iv iii (talk) 19:33, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Official language of the Netherlands

Regarding this edit by User:Nederlandse Leeuw.

The second paragraph of the lede says that Dutch does not have the status of an official language, based on this source from the site De Nederlandse Grundwet.

Now, several sources claim otherwise:

Dutch is an official language in the Netherlands, Belgium, Surinam and the former Dutch Antilles (including Aruba).
— Georges, De Schutter (1994). "Dutch". In König, Ekkehard; van der Auwera, Johan (eds.). The Germanic languages. London: Routledge. pp. 439–477.

Modern Standard Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands and one of the official languages of Belgium.
— Kooij, Jan G. (2009). "Dutch". In Comrie, Bernard (ed.). The World's Major Languages. New York: Routledge. pp. 110–124.

Dutch (Nederlands) is the official language of the Netherlands...
— Simpson, J.M.Y. (2008). "Dutch". In Keith, Brown; Ogilvie, Sarah (eds.). Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World 1st Edition. Elsevier Science. pp. 307–311. ISBN 9780080877754.

I doubt that these sources are all wrong. The main issue seems to be the purely de facto status of Dutch as official language of the Netherlands since there is no explicit regulation in the constitution or elsewhere. The above-mentioned text in De Nederlandse Grundwet talks about unsuccessful attempts to amend the constitution in this respect, and cites as one of the reasons for an initiative in 1995: "Het artikel beoogde ook de tot dusver ongeschreven regel vast te leggen dat Nederlands de officiële voertaal is." (The article also intended to specify the hitherto unwritten rule that Dutch is the official language").

So, should we follow reliable sources in this matter, or do we take the position "no de jure official language" = "no official language". Personally, I opt for the former solution. – Austronesier (talk) 12:05, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Austronesier It is a valid question, and I've wondered about this. But I think we can regard de jure and "official" as synonyms, because all discussions about whether to make Dutch the "official" language had to do with enshrining it in the Dutch Constitution or some other sort of national/countrywide law. "Nederlandse taal in de Grondwet" [Dutch language in the Constitution]. denederlandsegrondwet.nl (in Dutch). Montesquieu Instituut. 2018. Retrieved 21 March 2023.

By comparison, the Dutch language has been made co-official in the province of Friesland, as well as co-official in the Caribbean Netherlands or BES islands (as well as the CAS islands), but not on a national/countrywide level. How? By law. We can point to a written text which says that Dutch is official in each of these subnational territories.

The fact that, after a plethora of formal opposition, arguments and recommendations against it were made, the formal proposal by the government to make Dutch an / the official language of/in the Netherlands on the national/countrywide level was ultimately withdrawn by the government on 19 February 2018, leads to the conclusion that it still hasn't been made "official". And that this withdrawal is the result of careful considerations of the pros and contras (and the latter seem to have outweighed the former). The government gave up because it was unclear what to do with other languages, and there was "insufficient societal need" (onvoldoende maatschappelijke behoefte) to continue trying to make it official: Minister Ollongren wrote to the House of Representatives that the proposal did not sufficiently take into account other the official languages used in the Netherlands besides Dutch and Frisian, such as English and Papiamentu. The cabinet also saw insufficient societal need for the bill.

That means we are still stuck at the level of "unwritten rule". An "unwritten rule" = unofficial. If it were a written rule, it would be de jure, i.e. official. But it's not.

I think Wikipedia should be accurate on this point, and not explain de facto as if it means "official", which I consider misleading. To take a ridiculous example: I can claim my dad is the de facto Pope as long as I say: "Well it's not written down in any sort of law or anything, but really, my dad is the Pope." Regardless of how many people may believe in, or how many RS support, my claim that my dad is the de facto Pope, that doesn't make him the official Pope. The same goes for languages. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:50, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

In the term "official language", "official" is an attribute that describes the functional range of a specific language, and not the way how it achieved this property. The Oxford Companion to the English Language describes an official language as follows: A language used for official purposes, especially as the medium of a national government. (courtesy link for WP Library users: Official language), which corresponds with my understanding of what an official language is (even before I looked it up). Thus, a language can become an official language by being explicitly declared so by law, decree etc. ("de jure"), or it may have assumed this role historically without explicit legislation/regulation ("de facto"). In the discourse surrounding the official language debate in the Netherlands and the United States, "official language" has been restricted to mean the former, but that's not how the term generally is employed (s. above). In the general sense of the term, it aptly characterizes the role of Dutch in the Netherlands as described in heaps of reliable sources. –Austronesier (talk) 15:14, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

That may be, but that seems like a personal interpretation that does not pass WP:OR. I also don't buy the implicit argument that the term "official language" means something else in English than the term officiële taal in Dutch. As I said before, Dutch is an official language at certain sub-national levels, but in each of those cases, it is co-official with another language. There is no national/countrywide/kingdomwide "official language" in either the Netherlands or the Kingdom of the Netherlands. If there were, this discussion could not have happened in the first place. If you look at the explanation given by MP Ronald van Raak (who was amongst the parliamentary majority who opposed officialisation), he is pretty clear:

The Dutch government wanted to make a statement against the overuse of the English language and therefore made a law to change the Constitution and give the Dutch language a place in it. (But,) Dutch is not the only official language in our country, Frisian is also an official national language. (Namely, in the province of Friesland). I already said back then that if we were to anchor the Dutch language in the Constitution, we would also have to include Frisian. But a month after the law to record the use of Dutch in the Constitution was submitted, new constitutional relations went into effect in the Kingdom: on October 10, 2010, Curaçao and St. Maarten became – Aruba was already a country – autonomous countries within the Kingdom. Bonaire became part of the Netherlands as a public entity. This island is also bilingual and has Papiamentu in addition to Dutch. In addition to Dutch and Frisian we should now also record Papiamentu in the Constitution. However, Saba and Statia also became part of the Netherlands and these islands also have two languages: in addition to Dutch, that is English. That language should now also be included in the Constitution.

The government was clearly wrestling with this situation. To create a barrier in the Constitution against the overuse of English in the Dutch language, the new state-based relations would now also require English to be recorded as the official language. Successive ministers like Piet-Hein Donner, Liesbeth Spies and Ronald Plasterk wrestled with this law proposal, until Ollongren finally made the decision to withdraw it.

Anyway, you can read the full article here. I don't see an indication that "official language" means something else than officiële taal. It confirms what the sources said: only in a limited number of sub-national levels (that cover c. 16% of the Kingdom's territory, containing c. 5.6% of the Kingdom's population) there are multiple co-official languages. At most, you can say "Dutch is one of the four co-official languages at sub-national level, but there is no national/countrywide/kingdomwide "official language" in either the Netherlands or the Kingdom of the Netherlands". Those who say otherwise have either not checked the legal status, or engage in wishful thinking, and in both cases ignore the 2010s debate which resulted in the withdrawal of the proposal to make Dutch the/a national/countrywide/kingdomwide official language of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 16:27, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I have provided three academic sources which say that Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands. Fram has cited another uhm let's say quite relevant source below. I have also cited a dictionary definition for "official language" from a reliable source (not a "personal interpretation"; the full text linked above explicitly mentions non-statutory official languages). That's not OR. Rather, it is OR to restrict the term "official language" to statutory official languages without a source that explicitly does so. –Austronesier (talk) 17:10, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I'll grant you that technically, De Schutter 1994 is correct that Dutch is an official language in the Netherlands. So are Frisian, English and Papiamentu. That is not the question though: the question is whether Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands. Answer: no. It has no countrywide/kingdomwide official language. Simpson 2008 and Kooij 2009 are incorrect. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:54, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Not being grounded in the constitution doesn't mean that it can't be an official language. According to the Rijksoverheid (which should know things like this), Dutch is unambiguously the official language of the Netherlands. First sentence: "Nederlands is de officiële taal van Nederland." Fram (talk) 16:40, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Some informational Q & A web page on Rijksoverheid.nl can claim whatever it wants. That statement has no legal basis whatsoever; neither in the Constitution, nor in any other countrywide/kingdomwide law. All the other statements that follow it actually do. We can point to laws which confirm it. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:46, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

denederlandsegrondwet.nl "Bepaling over de Nederlandse taal (2010-2018)":

The proposal De officiële taal van Nederland is het Nederlands. ("The official language of the Netherlands is Dutch.") was withdrawn.

[T]he usefulness, necessity and practical added value of the bill were not considered sufficient by the House of Representatives. The House also criticised that Frisian was to be included in the Constitution while English and Papiamentu were to be omitted, while these are also languages spoken in the (Caribbean) Netherlands.

The Council of State also saw little benefit in the proposal. In its recommendation, the Council concluded, amongst other things, that there was no compelling reason because it was "not in dispute" that the language of the Netherlands was Dutch. Moreover, the Council felt the provision did not fit with the "austere character" of the Constitution. From a comparative legal inquiry, the Council noted that EU member states often did name their official language(s) in their constitutions, only that there was often a concrete reason for this, while there was none in the case of the Netherlands. Partly because of these arguments, the proposal was withdrawn in 2018.

A similar proposal was rejected already on 3 May 1997:

Responses from the House of Represetnatives echoed that they could not find any rationale for the "internal necessity" for a provision of the Dutch language in the explanatory memorandum. People also asked why Frisian was left out. Most felt that the initiative was insufficiently supported by arguments.

In short, enshrining Dutch as the official language (of communication) of the Netherlands was seen as unnecessary. This was in line with the recommendation of the Council of State.

If Dutch were the official language already, these debates couldn't have taken place. It would be a fait accompli. One would have to abolish it first in order to make it the official language (again). The fact that the first proposal was rejected by the House in 1997, and the second proposal was withdrawn by the government itself in 2018, confirms that Dutch is still not the official language of the Netherlands today. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 23:21, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

We already know that attempts to enshrine the status of Dutch as official language in the constitution have failed. This is not the issue here.

The question at stake is: is statutory regulation a prerequisite for a language to be called the official language of a country (or any other territorial entity) in Wikivoice? Multiple reliable sources don't confirm such a prerequisite. The Oxford Reference definition does not narrow it down that way (again: Official language – A language used for official purposes, especially as the medium of a national government. English is not the statutory or de jure official language of either the UK or the US, but is the de facto official language.) Three academic sources (and there are literally dozens of others) explicitly state that Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands. In order to prove them wrong, you will need to present reliable sources that explicitly state that Dutch is not the official language of the Netherlands. And in order to prove the Oxford Reference definition wrong, you will need to present reliable sources that explicitly state that only a statutory official language may be called an official language, whereas de facto official language may not. I'll be happy to see such sources. In case conflicting definitions of the term "official language" indeed exist, this discussion will reach a different level, viz. from an issue of WP:V to a question of WP:due weight.

Until then however, it is not sufficient to rely on sources that only report the non-statutory nature of Dutch when trying to refute its "official language" status; to do so is original research based on a personal definition of the term "official language" which so far has not been supported by reliable sources. –Austronesier (talk) 17:54, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I will ask for wider input in WT:LANG. Maybe I over-rely on the Oxford Reference definition or put too much trust in academic reference works published by Routledge and Elsevier :) –Austronesier (talk) 17:58, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Add: I have certainly said enough at this point when it's time for others to chime in, but I can't escape the charm of these two quotes from a De Gruyter volume:

The official language in the Netherlands is Dutch, which is spoken by the majority of the people (Rijksoverheid, n.d.-b).
Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands, although its status is not incorporated in the Dutch constitution (Nederlandse Grondwet, n.d.).
— Andreu van Hooft, Frank van Meurs, Ulrike Nederstigt, Berna Hendriks, Brigitte Planken, Sjoerd van den Berg (2019). "The Netherlands". In Cecilio Lapresta-Rey & Ángel Huguet (eds.), Multilingualism in European Language Education. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 132–155.

–Austronesier (talk) 18:37, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

De jure = official.

De facto = unofficial.

en:wikt:de facto In fact or in practice; in actual use or existence, regardless of official or legal status. (Often opposed to de jure.) quotations ▼
Although the United States currently has no official language, it is largely monolingual with English being the de facto national language.

Ok this is really ironic. Our own Wiktionary gives precisely English in the United States as an example of why de facto is opposed to "official". Notice that it says "de facto national language". If "national" could be replaced by "official" here, then the word "official" would be either meaningless or Schrödinger's cat: Foo has no official language, but somehow, miraculously, Bar is the official language of Foo. It simultaneously has no official language and one single official language. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Incidentally, the Wikipedia article de facto says the same thing. "De facto" is equated with "unofficial", "de jure" with "official"/"legal"/"by law"/"official law"(which seems tautological, but ok). And again, "national languages" versus "official languages" are the very first example used. The irony burns hard. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 00:38, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Collins Dictionary provides 3 definitions of "unofficial" (in relation to Spanish, but that is irrelevant hete), namely: "informal, de facto, unconfirmed".

Merriam-Webster provides three definitions for "de facto": "not formally recognised", "not legally constitutes", "not through laws or actions of the state".

List of Latin phrases (full)#D. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 01:01, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

We might express the situation by stating that Dutch is the actual ambtstaal of The Netherlands.--MWAK (talk) 07:44, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

@MWAK: the simplest and most straightforward translation of ambstaal into English is "official language" (per one reference work – cited above – defined as "a language used for official purposes, especially as the medium of a national government", which encaptures the main shades of Dutch ambstaal).

@Nederlandse Leeuw: There's is really no need to do OR by trying to derive the meaning of "official language" based on dictionary definitions for the word "official" alone, especially when a reliable source explicitly defines "official language" as a full phrase, and also when others sensibly apply the term as it is commonly understood to the case of Dutch (I am bold enough to say "commonly", because I am not bold enough to call multiple reliable sources written by subject-matter experts wrong, solely based on OR). You really need to provide sources that talk about what an "official language" actually is.

There is no Schrödinger's cat, because Foo has no official language, but somehow, miraculously, Bar is the official language of Foo. is not what any source says. You're combining your personal opinion (= "the Netherlands has no official language") with a well-sourced statement ("Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands"); of course the result will be paradoxical, but only because the first statement is wrong (at least at the current state of sourcing). Austronesier (talk) 18:31, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Of course no source says Foo has no official language, but somehow, miraculously, Bar is the official language of Foo., because I made it up as a fictional example (by employing an argumentum ad absurdum). But it is not far off from the premise of your position, namely: "the purely de facto status of Dutch as official language of the Netherlands". That is a contradiction in terms if de facto and "official" are mutually exclusive terms - which I sought to demonstrate with dictionary definitions.

You really need to provide sources that talk about what an "official language" actually is. I did. With reference to denederlandsegrondwet.nl and Van Raak, where it is explained that "official" means that its status is written down in either the Constitution or a regular/ordinary law. It was never just about the Constitution. The Council of State said that Regeling van het gebruik van de officiële taal kon volgens de Raad net zo goed geschieden via een gewone wet. Als toch voor een grondwettelijke bepaling zou worden gekozen, zou kunnen worden volstaan met een regelingsopdracht voor de formele wetgever. (According to the Council, regulation of the use of the official language could just as well be done through an ordinary law. If a constitutional provision were to be chosen after all, a regulation order for the formal legislature would suffice.) This makes clear that no such regular/ordinary law is in place yet either, otherwise they could point to that existing law.

How about you?

Kooij 2009 never defines the term "official language"

De Schutter 1994 never defines the term "official language"

Simpson 2008 never defines the term "official language"

All three of the original sources you provided just give you a quote declaring Dutch to be "the/an official language of/in the Netherlands", but otherwise they are mostly linguistic or geographical analyses of various Dutch dialects, they do not analyse the legal position at all.

van Hooft et al. 2019 also don't say why or how Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands, although its status is not incorporated in the Dutch constitution (Nederlandse Grondwet, n.d.). They only explain that it hasn't been incorporated into the Constitution and why, but not why we should nevertheless consider Dutch "the official language of the Netherlands" anyway. For Friesland they can actually point to the 2014 law. They can't do that for the Netherlands as a whole, because such a law does not exist (as I've been trying to explain).

To close with a confession: Until recently, I also thought that Dutch was the official language of the Netherlands, just because I assumed that. I had never checked. I had never asked. It just made sense because lots of countries around us have official languages, often in the Constitution or in a regular/ordinary law. The Netherlands do not. It was a surprise to me. But I read all there was to read about it (which is well-summarised at the denederlandsegrondwet.nl), and I had to draw the conclusion that I and many others are just simply wrong. There is no countrywide/kingdomwide official language. There are only 4 co-official languages in those 4 local cases. c. 94.4% of the Kingdom's population lives in an area that has no official language whatsoever. The constitutional question demonstrated that all 4 would have to be recognised as official languages at the kingdomwide level if Dutch were become an official language at that level. I already put all this information on Dutch Wikipedia on 21 March 2023, nobody complained about it, let alone reverted it. This is accepted knowledge amongst people who have been following these debates. I hadn't, so I was surprised, but I read it all, and I came to the conclusion I had simply been wrong. I had just assumed something without evidence. And this belief appears to be widespread, even in some otherwise reliable sources. But if you really pin someone down to ask how they know that, or how it is "official", there is just no response. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 19:26, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Dutch language and practice.

Dutch is one of the easiest languages for an English speaker. Also after learning it you will get a great reward, you will get to learn German, Afrikaans, and Flemish easier, and Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish will be easier to learn at an extent. Practice. Waar is de man. Where is the man. Waar is het koekje. Where is the cookie.

Notice Het and De.

Het is for anything non living and doesn't come from anything living and the word girl is the only word that is in the het section but is living.

De is for anything living and comes from anything living.

So The Wine would be De Wijn.

Why? Because wine comes from grapes, which grapes grow on plants and plants are living.

Thanks for reading! Bye, Joshua. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.43.104.127 (talk) 04:39, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Yours is an interesting hypothesis but one easily falsified. A konijn (bunny) is living but nevertheless het konijn. A ster (star) is a non-living object (by the usual standards) yet de ster.

Though some very simple Dutch sentences are understandable to an intelligent English-speaking reader (Aan de arm van een man zitten een hand en vingers), a correct pronunciation and grammar are often difficult to attain. And Flemish is not a language :o).--MWAK (talk) 08:03, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Ethnicity Section Rework

The shortlist of ethnicities which speak Dutch needs a rework. The list is mostly composed of peoples who speak Afrikaans, not Dutch. Within the list, the Afrikaners/Boers, Cape Coloureds, Cape Malays, Griqua, Oorlam, and Basters are all incorrectly listed as speakers of Dutch and not Afrikaans, which doesn't even have half these peoples mentioned on its respective article. Adamcoxj0808 (talk) 18:03, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

History

Dech in malabar 2409:4073:2097:AB:8CCA:8F0:DE68:EC6A (talk) 07:53, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

You mean Dutch Malabar? What has that to do with the history of the Dutch language? Fram (talk) 09:02, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

They are posting a homework query to the talk page under the misguided assumption it is a search query, auto translate, or ChatGPT. The tell is a short non-grammatical question by an IP with a school subject like "History" as the title. Delete this stuff per talk page guidelines, don't reply to it. Gnomingstuff (talk) 14:15, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

Phonotactics: (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C)(C)(C)

There are NL words like:

• Dremptst = most (i.e. superlative) relating to Drempt (geographical place)
• promptst = quickest
• herfstst = most like or relating to autumn
• ernstst = most serious

I hasten to add that a) the adjectives "herfsts" and "ernst" are probably both archaic and b) while pronouncing the "mptst"-sequence in normal speech one usually leaves out "p".

But in careful speech these clusters are nonetheless grammatical.

Do you have any examples of historical texts in which herfsts appears or ernst functions as an adjective?--MWAK (talk) 06:39, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I probably have to correct my statement with respect to the use of "herfsts" as an adjective. A very similar word <herfts(ch)> (autumnal) {which might actually be a orthographic variant of <herfsts> and where "ch" remained unpronounced; for the latter cf. https://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/isch fifth paragraph starting with "Voor de 19e-eeuwse woorden op -isch"} has been used by the poet Bredero in 1620 (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/De_werken_van_G.A._Bredero_%28IA_dewerkenvangabre03bred%29.pdf p. 115 l. 2).

The adjective <herfsts> is used on https://www.reddit.com/r/DanmeiNovels/comments/16suxy9/is_thousand_autumns_worth_reading/?tl=nl (in a declined form <Herfstse> in <Duizend Herfstse Nachten> (A Thousand Autumnal Nights) in what appears to be a book title), as well as e.g. in a dictionary https://mijnstadmijndorp.nl/app/detail.php?nav_id=0-1&id=277118808&index=335.

And a slightly different word with the same form has been used, too: <herfsts> (autumn's) is a genitive form and occurs on https://www.trouw.nl/duurzaamheid-economie/dat-er-zo-veel-takken-en-zo-weinig-blaadjes-vallen-is-niet-des-herfsts~b7c418c4/?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F and dates from 2021:1007.

A couple of centuries ago, <ernst> was in use as an adjective, accoording to https://gtb.ivdnt.org/iWDB/search?actie=article&wdb=WNT&id=M016083&lemmodern=ernst&domein=0&conc=true.

An etymological dictionary page on https://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/ernst says about <ernst> as an adjective: "Het gebruik als bnw., sedert het Mnl., Mnd., Ofri. (ërnst, alleen als bnw. opgetekend), Vroeg-Nhd. (sedert Luther) zal wel uitgegaan zijn van de praedicatieve functie van het znw. (vgl. vroom, fout)." (Use as an adjective, since Middle Dutch, Middle Low German, Old Frysian (ërnst, only recorded as adjective), Early Lower High German (since Luther) must have originated from the predicative function of the noun (cf. vroom (pious), fout (wrong)).)Redav (talk) 17:58, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

More importantly, in almost all NL syllables ending in a cluster of more than two consonants, the ones from the third phoneme onwards belong the set /s, ʃ, t, c/:

• <herfst> /hɛrfst/
• <ernst> /ɛrnst/
• <promptst> /prɔmptst/
• <borsjtsj> /borʃcʃ/ (if /cʃ/ is not interpreted as a single affricate phoneme /ʧ/)
• <crunch> /krʏɲcʃ/
• <mentsj> /meɲcʃ/
• <mulch> /mʏʎcʃ/ or /mʏltʃ/
• <kulturkampf> /kulturkɑmpf/ (if /pf/ is not analysed as a single affricate phoneme /p͡f/)

Several linguists analyse the maximal NL syllable as:

• (C)(C)(V)(X)(C)

where (X) may be a consonant (C) or a vowel (V) creating either a tense vowel or a closing (i.e. falling) diphthong in combination with the other (V).

Any extra consonants from the third consonant onwards at the end of the syllable belong to the set given above, and any extra consonant from the third consonant onwards (counting from the syllable nucleus) in front of the syllable belongs to the set /s, ʃ/:

• <straf> /strɑf/
• <strudel> /ʃtruːdəl/

Exceptions are (depending on exact prunciation for the third example):

• <Elmpt> /ɛlmpt/
• <Calmpthout> /kɑlmpthɔut/
• <sgraffito> /zgrɑfito/
• <'ndrangheta> /ndrɑŋɡeta/

So a question is: is the statement in the current article text that the maximal syllable reads (C)(C)(C)(V)(C)(C)(C)(C) even accurate, or insightful?Redav (talk) 18:35, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

In my view the more interesting (and actually common) word is Ooievaar (Stork), it follows a (V)(V)(V)(V)(C)(V)(V)(C) structure (although the OO and AA diphones inflate it all and the I is more of a J sound). Still rather uncommon to have so few consonants in a long word. 20:20, 28 July 2025 (UTC) Arnoutf (talk) 20:20, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

While interesting in itself, Arnutf, I fail to see how the subject of longer vowel strings relates to the subject of longer consonant strings, which seems to be the subject at hand here. I would suggest the statement in the article text about syllable structure (at the phonemic level) be changed somewhat along the lines:

• maximum (S)(K)(K)(V)(X)(K)(C) with X = konsonant or X = G(lide), S = sibilant, C = cluster of coronal stop(s) and/or sibilant(s);
• with a few exceptions.

(Notice I have adapted to the glide from my previous contribution.)

Now, as for <ooievaar> (stork), I would analyse this word phonemically as follows:

• /o.jə.var/

The fact that the official NL spelling writes the /o/ with two vowel letters, /j/ with a vowel letter and the /a/ with two vowel letters does not make the word <ooievaar> have a long string of consecutive vowels. In fact, it has at most one "consecutive" vowel (in three separate places).

Even the former word <papagaaieëieren> (currently spelled <papagaaieneieren> could be analysed as:

• /pa.pa.ga.jə.(ʔ)ɛj.jə.rən/

ʔ indicating the glottal stop(-like sound) inserted to prevent an onsetless syllable. By putting it in parentheses I mean to indicate it is not a phoneme but rather a glide-like insertion. I think the NL language always inserts "something" (like ʔ) before any (seemingly) syllable-initial vowel, unless of course a final consonant from an immediately preceding syllable fulfils the role of an onset. Of course, after any tense vowel (other than schwa), a homorganic glide is inserted before any immediately following phonemic vowel. So we have:

• /zu.(w)av/ <Zoeaaf>
• /ɦi.(j)at/ <hiaat>
• /fly.(ɥ)ɔr/ <fluor>
• /bə.(ʔ)am/ <beaam>

So the glottal stop may be viewed as the “glide” after /ə/, as well as after /a/; cf. /ka.na.(ʔ)a.nit/.

What I mean to say: however many orthographic vowel letters may be concatenated in an NL word, at the phonetic level there is never more than one consecutive vowel, as long as the final sound of a diphthong is considered a (glide) consonant.

I have to admit, correcting my previous thoughts, that phonemically vowels may be next to each other, as in the examples above. But /o.jə.var/ is not such an example, since its /j/ is phonemic, not just phonetic.

A more interesting example is:

• /he.(j)a.(ɦ/ʔ)o.(ɦ/ʔ)ɔp.lɛj.dɪŋ/ <heao-opleiding>

with four consecutive phonemic vowels, interspersed by “automatic” homorganic glides. In my personal speech I seem to detect an [ɦ](-like) phone instead of [ʔ] in allegro speech, and I gather the two are two allophones of the same “glide”.

Consonants still seem to be concatenated more easily, I think, within a syllable, and to a larger extent across syllable boundaries, <angstschreeuw> ~ /ˈɑŋst.sxrew/ being a case in point.Redav (talk) Redav (talk) 21:47, 29 July 2025 (UTC)